Sleeping with the enemy

Sleeping with the enemy
Originally uploaded by Alejandro Ramírez

# 017/365
Mmmh, this is the second Saturday where I didn't feel like I really did a good job... it must be the day of the week when I unwind from the pace.

I ran out of ideas so I pulled out my wooden chess set and started snapping some photos.

These are the nicest of the whole session, but if you ask me, they are not exactly my favorite shots... I don't know, there's just nothing to them... it may be because of my ignorance of the game that I am not able to convey a message. So I tried hard to portray the pieces as characters having a conversation with each other.

The equipment and settings for this shot:

- Tamron 90mm Macro lens

- Tripod

- Macro sliding rail

- External light

Settings:

1) Took snapshot of white piece of paper, and used it for custom White Balance calibration.

2) Used aperture settings of F2.5-F.8, the best shots came out with ~F4.0 for a nice blur.

3) No flash

4) Manual mode

Inferno

Inferno
Originally uploaded by Alejandro Ramírez

# 016/0365
Even more fun with flowers... this time I used a lamp and moved it around a lot to play with lighting effects.

Equipment used:
- Tamron 90mm
- Tripod
- Macro sliding rail
- Lamp with "Helical" 15W light bulb
- Wireless remote control (you can use the timer if you don't have one)

Settings:
- Played with F4 all the way to F32, and moved the exposure settings to compensate for the lack of flash to almost +4 F-stops some times.

I took over 100 shots, so it was a lot of bracketing and comparing shots afterwards before post-processing.

Playing with Fire

Playing with Fire
Originally uploaded by Alejandro Ramírez

# 015/365
My wife bought some new fun candle jars tonight. I didn't have a lot of time to take shots because a friend from St. Louis is visiting, so I decided to take some shots very quickly.

In lieu of a tripod I used whatever I got my hands on to make the camera steady for long-exposure in low-light... then I took this shot of the top of one of the candle jars and made a couple of fun crops with it.

I used F8-F10, as short an exposure as I could get for hand-holding, and no flash.

A day in the life of a software tester...

My friend and colleague Tom Gilchrist invited me to give a presentation to the students of the evening class "Software Quality Assurance & Process" which he teaches at UW's Extension program.

The goal of the presentation was to give students an insight of my experiences in the job. The audience was very diverse with a mixture of newcomers, career change seekers, and people looking to refresh their existing skills.

I had a good time, the audience seemed engaged and interested, and I felt like I hit a couple of good spots for some people.

Here is the slideshow and I will keep adding on information here, so visit often! 

Little circle of life

Little circle of life
Originally uploaded by Alejandro Ramírez

# 014/365

My wife's flower bouquet is starting to show some life after 2 days of settling down, so what a better chance to capture those beautiful colors!

The settings: tripod + slider, long exposures, and aperture set to f11-f14; no flash, and lots of patience, because my wife was typing on her laptop causing the table to vibrate and the flower with it.

So I asked her to stop every time I took a shot and it worked out pretty well :-)

Flagged

Flagged
Originally uploaded by Alejandro Ramírez

# 013/365
Every morning when I shower I enjoy seeing the colors in these drops in that little thingy that holds the shampoo bottles... so tonight I went back to the shower with a water spray, a tripod and had some fun all over again.

If you're curious, they're an upside down bottle of Head and Shoulders on the left and a bottle of Fructis on the right.

Here is a sneak peek at "behind the scenes", where you can get an idea of the tough conditions for this shot:

• the tricky placement of the tripod 
• the water-spray bottle
• lighting conditions

... and let's not forget the humidity in the environment.

Who cares, it's all for the love of it!

New Kid on the Blog

Information Overload
Originally uploaded by Alejandro Ramírez

#012/365
Tired of information overload I made a public statement to my friends and contacts to only look for me in three spots: Facebook, Flickr and Blogger.

Stats are up!

It seems like my 2009's new year resolution of taking and posting pictures every day is going great and having a very positive outcome!

We are merely on the 12th day of the year and the views stats between yesterday and today summed up 285! My record last year was around 300, but considering how early in the year we are, I would say things are looking very promising.

A side goal is to hopefully get at least one photo make it to Explore every month, I am not sure if that will happen but I will work hard :-)

Mi meta es lograr una foto en Explore cada mes, no sé si lo logre, pero no dejaré de intentarlo.

On blue days you cheer me up

On blue days you cheer me up
Originally uploaded by Alejandro Ramírez

#011/365
Yesterday I bought my wife a lovely flower bouquet that had the most wonderful flowers and vivid colors.

Once we had them on a flower vase at home I got clearance from her to take some shots, so I brought in my camera, tripod, slider and twin lite flash, and the fun began...

I am terrible with flower names, so don't ask me what they are (but if you know, please do tell me by commenting here or in Flickr, please!)

The bouquet had a couple of big bright pink-ish flowers and two of the blue/purple ones like the one in this shot.

Needless to say that I spent the most time taking shots of the pink ones, and towards the end I decided to photograph this little-er one.

I took over 43 shots, but only picked two of the whole set, and I have to say that I am very happy with the results.

This shot is using the twin lite at ratio 1:1, no special settings, manual mode and a somewhat long exposure.

HINT: Guys out there, now you have another incentive to get your wife or girlfriend a flower bouquet more often ;-)

- Just another idea for my unofficial set of 'A Seattle Gray-Day Photographer's Idea list'

Maybe one day I will write an actual book about this... -ponders-

Camera vs. Camera vs. Camera vs.... (Score Card)

DSLR vs. Point-and-Shot vs. Video vs. Mobile (Score Card)
Originally uploaded by Alejandro Ramírez

#010/365
Scrabble is one of my favorite board games of all time.

I was fairly disappointed of having to wake up to yet another gray day in Seattle because I really wanted a shot of the skyline for my HDR photo project.

Then I saw our Scrabble and dug it. First I decided to put some Flickr-related words on the board, so I began with the obvious "Flickr"... but then I thought of the challenge and effort required to make it to the Flickr Explore set... "Interestingness"!!! So I collected the words (all 15 of them), and to my pleasant surprise, the board is exactly 15 squares tall by 15 wide (lucky me!).

So then one word followed another:

Flickr
Interestingness
Sets
Groups
Contacts
Tag
Geo (from Geo-tagging)
Explore
Photostream

Once I was done I came up with the idea of a "match" for interestingness between devices that can post content to Flickr:
- a DSLR camera
- a video camera
- a point-and-shoot camera
and
- a mobile phone with camera

It was a lot of fun :-)

Are you pondering what I'm pondering?

Are you pondering what I'm pondering?
Originally uploaded by Alejandro Ramírez

#009/365
You may recognize the phrase from Pinky and the Brain... and that's exactly what my cat was probably thinking when I asked my wife to hold him so I could take a macro shot of his eye.

He wasn't very happy so I couldn't get as close as I would have liked to, but nevertheless, this "evil eye" shot was worth posting.

The sun inside your eyes

The sun inside your eyes
Originally uploaded by Alejandro Ramírez

#008/365
By far, this is the most shocking macro shot I have ever taken.

I was playing around with the camera and my intention was to see what color my eyes were for real. I usually call them "hazel", but sometimes they look green.

After several (I mean it) shots, when I was doing the editing, I was completely shocked when I saw the details of the eye's anatomy.

I am convinced I should have been some type of scientist/biologist in another life.

Optimistic

Optimistic
Originally uploaded by Alejandro Ramírez

#007/365
This is one of a series of "model" shots I took using this drawing aid.

It was fun to explore poses and angles. I couldn't pick a favorite easily, all shots were very interesting to take.

Waiting for you

Waiting for you
Originally uploaded by Alejandro Ramírez

#006/365

Happy "Día de Reyes" to all of you! Today in Mexico we celebrate the day when the 3 wise men came to visit child Jesus. Kids in some regions actually get their Christmas presents today (and not on the 25th like the rest of us).

So with this thought in mind I couldn't help it, I had to go in the nursery and take a shot of my son-to-be-born's name.

This is more sentimentalism and nostalgia than anything else, but hey, it's my debut into fatherhood and feel entitled to be a softy ;-)

(H)ello (D)olly (R)emix

(H)ello (D)olly (R)emix
Originally uploaded by Alejandro Ramírez

#005/365

HDR stands for High Dynamic Range imaging, which requires you to take several shots of the same photo while bracketing each shot's exposure.

Then you merge all the shots and tweak them using a software program like Photoshop CS3 or Photomatix Pro 3.1.1 (which has a downloadable trial that never expires and puts a watermark on your photos).

For what I've seen, the best shots seem to be those taken outside in direct sunlight. I hope we have some sun over the weekend to go and try this.

Another beautiful morning

Another beautiful morning
Originally uploaded by Alejandro Ramírez

#004/365
This is one of two photos that I took from the same spot in my apartment at the same time of day but on two different days.

The first photo had cooler colors, whereas this one has warmer colors.

I liked both a lot.

Married... with spoiled, rotten children

Married... with spoiled, rotten children
Originally uploaded by Alejandro Ramírez

#003/365
Every time I take the dog out for a walk we go by an apple tree that has all these interesting and colorful fruit laying around.

I tried photographing it in the past but I didn't like the photos very much.

This time I took a different approach, more fun than serious and was very please with the results.

Power up!

Power up!
Originally uploaded by Alejandro Ramírez

#002/365
More around the house shots.

This was my first day back to work after the long holiday break, so when I came back it was already dark.

Looking around I decided to use a red background to make some everyday objects a little bit more interesting so I grabbed a notebook with red cover and placed my subjects in front of it.

This is one of many photos I took, but it was the most popular that day.

Oh, and did I mention that I am a HUGE Nintendo fan? :-)

Postmortem

Postmortem
Originally uploaded by Alejandro Ramírez

#001/365
This is the first photo of the year.

I love bugs and macro photography. I think one day I want to get a microscope and find a way to hook up my camera to it so that I can take pictures of the micro-world of cells and atoms.

My Photos in Explore

My Photos in Explore
Originally uploaded by Alejandro Ramírez

2009 begins. 3 of my photos made it to Flickr Explore, which is a pool of the best photos in the community, selected by a complex algorithm of popularity and interestingness.

My 2009 resolution is to take photos every day of the year to push my creativity and improve my photography skills.

Stay tuned...